by Daily Digest

Economy

Yet as of Tuesday, at least 17 states have recorded a clear upward trend of average new daily cases — a rise of at least 10% — over the past seven days, according to an analysis based on data from Johns Hopkins University.

The economy consists of people who have hopes and fears. As long as they are afraid of a lethal virus, they will avoid restaurants, travel and workplaces. (According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll last week, only 25 percent of all Americans want to “open businesses and get the economy going again, even if that means more people will get the coronavirus.”) The only way to restore the economy is to earn the confidence of both vulnerable industries and vulnerable people through testing, contact tracing and isolation.

“That’s led us to some painful decisions today: we are stopping some of our non-core investments and reducing the size of our workforce by around 3,000 people, each of whom I want to personally thank for their contributions to Uber. As I said to our teams today, we are making these hard choices now so that we can move forward and begin to build again with confidence,” he said.

Trump told reporters he has been taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement daily “for about a week and a half now.” Trump spent weeks pushing the drug as a potential cure or prophylaxis for COVID-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration’s top medical professionals. The drug has the potential to cause significant side effects in some patients and has not been shown to combat the new coronavirus.

“I have never seen anything remotely approaching this,” said Ryan Zagata, president of Brooklyn Bicycle Company, where sales have soared by more than 600 percent this year compared with the same period in 2019. “If you went into a store three weeks ago you could find a bike under $1,000. Right now shelves are bare.”

The spike in sales comes on the heels of stay-at-home orders that have temporarily curtailed daily life, but that may permanently transform the role of bicycles into something more essential, including a safer alternative to public transit as the nation slowly begins to reopen.

The latest available weekly data from the EIA estimated production at 11.6 million bpd for the week ending on May 8. But the adjustment in the estimates, formerly known as Unaccounted-for Crude Oil, is at nearly -1 million bpd, the most negative adjustment factor for crude oil production ever. This, according to Bloomberg’s Lee, could mean that the EIA is either over-estimating U.S. production by 914,000 bpd for the week to May 8, or underestimating demand, or somewhere in between.

There are some parallels between Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease and Covid-19, said Matt Gompper, a disease ecologist and head of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology at New Mexico State University.

Both are thought to have “spilled over” from one species to another — in the case of the novel coronavirus, likely a bat to humans; in the rabbit disease, from domestic to wild rabbits — and both arose so quickly that health officials had a limited window to act.

Blame broken supply chains. Across the globe, production is handled through what’s known as just-in-time methods. Output from farms can be shuttled into stores or restaurants within just a few days, and the next batch of crops and livestock is ready to take its place immediately.

When those chains face challenges — as has been the case with trucking, ports, labor crunches, restaurant shutdowns and slowed trade — there’s a huge backlog of supply that never makes it to stores.

Gold & Silver

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The future won't be as placid, secure and predictable as the status quo would have you believe. A Covid-19 vaccine, or lack thereof, will have zero effect in terms of reversing these cycles. Call it Fate, call it karma, call it what you will, but the cycles have aligned and nothing can stop the unraveling of all that was foolishly presumed to be permanent.

At the age of 11 we moved to the big city and I got to live in a house with running water, indoor plumbing and consistent heat. My childhood has influenced my perceptions. It amazes me that so few people and this site in particular are not more alarmed by what is going on in our economy. It’s crumbling, right before our eyes.

But as Charles Hugh Smith reflects above the more wealthy a person is - perhaps the harder it is for them to see the decay and collapse around them because they are insulated.

Thank you CHS - you get it and are able through your blog to articulate reality to people.

Seeing does not mean there is acceptance

I agree with you Granny. I spied this quote on Jesse’s Cafe Ameriacain post for today:

People are foolish. They think that they are winning. But they no longer understand the nature and the wagers of the game that they are playing.

It seems to ring true. What people are not seeing is this IS a big game, and further, the game is rigged against them from all angles. The only option is to opt out and not play the game at all. The willingness and ability to do that are extremely limited because people are willfully blind to the rigging and crumbling. The sheeple will never see the need to even try, much less take the necessary steps, at least not until it is too late. The question I ask myself is ‘is it already too late?’. If so, perhaps it is time to party hearty...

I will add to Nate’s post the similar 5 stages of collapse as per Dimitri Orlov: Financial Collapse, Commercial Collapse, Political Collapse, Social Collapse, and Cultural Collapse. We are in all of the first four stages simultaneously, in varying degrees. I think it is doing the slow approach to the cliff, which is nearer due to SC2, after which the collapse will be fast and furious, and we will enter stage 5. After that, all bets are off for how things will play out. Not a pleasant thought...

Understanding Other People's Awareness

I have been lucky and fortunate in this life to have run across and known a few people who have greatly contributed not only to my own self knowledge, but also to my understanding of others whose behaviors, reactions, and perceptions are very different from my own. One of those knowledge contributors, a PhD psychologist once said to me something profoundly wise that has been very useful. His words were "Never Underestimate Denial". You have to realize that denial is a psychological protective device, employed to maintain a person's psychic survival and homeostasis, when presented with information that is so shocking, scary, threatening or beyond understanding, that a human being cannot initially or immediately process the content. Denial is not something you choose to employ for the sake of an argument, although I have known some very smart people who never seem to be able to move past their own denial for years and years. Even when presented with the most convincing truth and facts. Maybe they were psychologically damaged as children and have never been able to work through it. Maybe they don't have psychological stamina or resilience. Whatever the case these people deserve understanding and compassion, but they also will never be the ones who can demonstrate insight, leadership or wisdom and it is simply pointless to argue with them. In this crisis what gives me hope is something Dolores Cahill, the Irish scientist has said. She maintains that we only need a minority of enlightened educated people to stand up, stay strong and resist what has been planned by those who do not love mankind. A small minority of people CAN turn the whole direction of the herd. CAVEAT: Cahill also says: We need to do this now, in every way possible and encourage other like minded people to do the same. Everyday that goes by we are losing ground. Time is not on our side.

I'm in!

She maintains that we only need a minority of enlightened educated people to stand up, stay strong and resist what has been planned by those who do not love mankind. A small minority of people CAN turn the whole direction of the herd.